


Won’t you wake me up?

by RoseQueen13



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Red Robin (Comics), Under the Red Hood
Genre: Character Study, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone in Gotham needs major help, Gen, Gotham City - Freeform, One Shot, POV Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown is Robin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 10:43:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19249576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseQueen13/pseuds/RoseQueen13
Summary: Gotham City has many children. All are scarred, all are broken, none are very good people. Anyone can tell you, that Gotham is only worth going too if you’ve got nothing left, and they are almost always right.





	Won’t you wake me up?

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Ruelle, in the song Bad Dream. Also, sorry I did not put Duke into this. I don’t feel like I have a good enough grasp on his character to do write something like this on him.

We all have Gotham in our veins. Tim could tell anyone that in a second. They’ve died for this city, bled for it, and most of their defining moments were staged there. Gotham claimed all of the Bats a long time ago, and she doesn’t ever plan on letting them go.

Bruce was the first. Though he may have been born in Gotham, Tim thinks the first time she ever really held him was the Night his parents died. 

He was different from most of the Bat-clan in that. Sure, he was raised in Gotham but he had that single mark of this city and proceeded to leave it for decades. Bruce may have learned all the crooks and crannies in Gotham but he never lived in its streets, never spent his childhood there.

Bruce, like all the rest, is still Gotham’s, despite being more separate than the others in his connection. She continues to rest in his blood and be the cause of most of his scars, and, If you ask Tim, that will never change.

The next, is of course, Dick Grayson, the first child to lay his heart in Gotham’s Vigilante practices. Dick was born outside of his city, and never spent a second in her arms until he was eight years old, way too young to fight anything she could do to make him hers. 

Like Bruce, Dick was not marked by Gotham until later in life, but unlike him, Dick spent his childhood jumping and running through her streets. There was a life before Gotham and after Gotham, and those two are separate to the point of concern.

Nevertheless, Dick Grayson was made for this city and has had his blood run down these streets more than anyone this city has not loved could. He will always be the Golden Son to Gotham, He will always be the first.

There was one Robin that was always more of Gotham’s son than the rest. Jason Todd is a tragedy, but he is her tragedy. 

Jason was born on these city streets, and was raised on them too. When Gotham burned, he burned, and when she needed a sacrifice, well who better than this boy that has already given himself up to this city.

Bruce once told Tim that Jason knew the city better than anyone else in the bat family ever could. Privately, Tim thought that a prince can never know the city better than the worker, as the worker has seen all of the disaster that the city likes to hide away from the prince. Of course, Bruce demanded he see all the crimes, but Jason was never given a choice in it until he was old enough to have seen it all.

Jason was also the first of her children to die. Gotham, somehow, still managed to pull the strings to have her son returned to her, even if it is with guns, blood, and nothing to lose. Maybe Jason knows that he can never truly leave, as the Damned Son of this city, but he leaves all the same only to come back months later with new excuses and less hatred for Gotham.

Then you come to the third of Gotham’s children, Tim Drake. He knows he could never breathe in the city the way Jason did, but he was still the second most marked of her children at the time.

While Tim may have not resided on her streets, he spent night after night of his childhood stalking the rooftops. He didn’t have any noble purpose for this during the majority of the three years Tim doing it before he became Robin, but Gotham will kill noble people just as soon as not. 

He knew the streets and the shadows, not by living through them, but by seeing them in a way only a photographer could. Bruce and Dick came into the night only to stop the horrific things, Tim went to memorialize them. Of course, he was far more focused on the hope that the stopping of these crimes gave way too, but Gotham didn’t care as long as he was still running through her streets.

Tim would later come to be scarred as more times than he can count in Gotham’s night, and that is a good enough promise to her that he will never leave, not truly at least.

Gotham’s first daughter stood with her fists ready and her bruises new, that is how this city met the daughter. Stephanie Brown may have had the shortest career as a Robin, but her time as Robin was not what defined her.

Oh, Gotham knew from the moment she laid eyes on this girl that Stephanie would be another child, almost like Jason, that she could mold and later break. Tim thinks, later when they are both old and their scars have healed, that Stephanie was one of the strongest that Gotham ever raised.

She would become more than Robin, and though all of them eventually left the position, Stephanie was the first one who knew who she was immediately. She had started her Career as Spoiler, and there was no reason to throw away her legacy now.

Maybe Gotham loved her for that too, in how she never followed the bat legacy the way the rest of them did. Stephanie was always independent of the Bats, even if she was a Robin and later Batgirl, the girl would always return to her start.

Later, Gotham would bring forth another daughter, though this one had the least of Gotham in her veins. Cassandra Cain would have to wait years before she came to the city, and even though for many of the others, this city is a tragedy, for Cassandra it was a promise. A promise of a better life, of a good family.

There was never a way to be one of Gotham’s favored and avoid strife, so Cassandra is hurt, and she loses many things. But Gotham never chose her children based on their weaknesses, so the girl will continue walking and leaves her past behind her in a way few other Bats have.

Damian Wayne was one Gotham never expected to come into her arms. He was raised outside of her reach but comes to her later all the same. Though he has gone through many names, Wayne will always be the one the boy chooses. This alone is enough to prove himself to Gotham.

Damian has little connection to this place other than his father, but the amount of pain he has gone through makes him blend in well enough. Of course, it is hard to have not been through enough things to make a normal person fall apart in a city such as Gotham.

Tim believes, unlike Gotham, that Damian will never truly stay in this city. It’s not that He doesn’t deserve a place here, and more that Damian knows that there is better than Gotham that he could reside in. Sure, all of the Bats know that there’s better out there, but they are all so attached here that another place would be unbearable after too long. Damian has not had the time to form a connection like that, and while he would still die for this place, he deserves better than anything Gotham could give him.

Gotham, thinks Tim when no one else is around, is the worst place in the world. She has no shame or fear, and will cause you more pain than any one person should experience.

But as it is, Gotham is home, and maybe its streets run wet with blood, but it still welcomes her children regardless of what they have done. And for people who have done unimaginable things simply to survive? That’s the best thing they could hope for in a city, regardless of what it costs.

**Author's Note:**

> I understand that i may have not nailed some characters perfectly. I wrote the most on the characters i know the most about and did my best on the others. It would be great to get feedback, and just thanks for reading this far anyway.


End file.
